Wednesday, 12 July 2017

SNS 3: Neo-fascists co-opt augmented reality dance-off!

SATURDAY NIGHT SCREAMSHEET 3: on a Wednesday, for your added convenience! As usual, our news feed compiles the most relevant stories from the dark future and compiles them into an adventure below the jump, just like the screamsheets in the back of the old CP2020 corebook.

This adventure was super timely and relevant (when I wrote it, a year ago. Guess what had just come out...).

FIRST MUSIC DLC AVAILABLE FOR ROCKNAROCK

GamerGateWay.com

...the popular augmented reality game calls upon anime-avatars of the Norse gods to prepare for Ragnarok by defeating virtual monsters and collecting dance moves from locations across the city, while gathering teams to defeat members of rival “Hearths” in competitive metal dance-offs. Following their victory over #HearthAesir in the first national all city SUNDAY METALOPALYPSE, #HearthVanir voted for more songs by Sister Sabbath and Tokyo Demons to be added to the new Speed Metal DLC.

...Grand Truth Speaker Egilsson denounced the game for its perky graphical style, calling it “misrepresentation of the essential characteristics of the Norse Pantheon.” He also called upon Pseudopod Games to increase “Norse Representation” among the character avatar options, “which do not realistically depict the Nordic genetic monoculture that would have existed in Viking lands circa 900AD.”

Pseudopod Games pointedly ignored Mr Egilsson’s comments.

“TASTEMAKERS” REPRESENT LESS THAN 4% OF INDIVIDUALS, SAYS MILITARY INTELLIGENCE THEORIST

WallStreetReview

“...it should be scientifically possible to identify individuals with the most significant impact on local views on a subject. By concentrating our specific focus on convincing those individuals, advertisers and influencers can dramatically magnify their chances of success. The trick is identifying them.”

CONTROVERSIAL SPARKLE VAMPIRES ONLINE FAN DRIVES OFF BRIDGE

Terra Haute Republican

...Mr Vasquez, who we interviewed for this site just last week, was the most fervent proponent of The Cattle Cull, a movement inside the Sparkle Vampires Online MMO to compel new Human Faction players to join so-called “Blood Farms.” Torrid Romance Games expressed regret over his sudden death, paying tribute to “his vivid imagination and vast passion for online roleplaying and our game.”

...expressed concern about the game’s appeal to members of the far-right, whom he said were using the game as a mechanism for exchanging information through coded dance moves and dead-drops at Great Halls. Meanwhile, NetworkMom.us has expressed “serious concerns” about the moderation policy of the game, after an undercover investigation by the site claimed #HearthVanir’s forums are a “toxic cesspool of racist memes laser-targeted (literally, in some cases) at 12 year olds.”

The allegations top off a week of serious controversy for Pseudopod games. On Monday, a dance-off organised by members of #HearthAesir outside the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo provoked violent protests and a number of arrests.

As you can imagine, the shareholders are less than happy about that last one. “Trojan Horse for racists to indoctrinate 14 year olds using cute pictures of Freyja” is not a good elevator-pitch for the DLC.

The company has hired a shady consultancy out of Washington DC called Trollslayer to co-ordinate an “ideaplex disruption” among the Miami fan community. The goal is to reduce the influence of Nazi players among the local #HearthVanir faction by identifying local “tastemakers” and “removing their influence from circulation.”

This doesn’t have to be a euphemism for murder, although it can be!

Trollslayer’s experiment in Miami revolves around the use of freelancers. Knowing they don’t have the manpower for a nationwide contra-fascist purge, they need to know if local talent can be trusted to fulfil the brief. Their handpicked fixer for this operation is Solar, a grizzled Cuban fixer with a good reputation in the local scene. She likes cheap cigarettes and trashy bars and reliable operators.

She’s also quite up for taking part in a (somewhat dystopian?!) memetic warfare operation against a fan community, because she likes money for buying cigarettes and doesn’t care for the Aryan Nation.

THE BRIEF

Trollslayer wants to drastically reduce the influence of the fascists on the local fan community. Their algorithm has identified about thirty individuals as the source of the “contagion” inside #HearthVanir. They believe that by removing some of these individuals, other groups inside the community will be allowed to thrive, notably the cosplayers and the locally prominent Haitian metalheads. With other factions predominant inside the Miami #Hearth, the moderators will then be able to act against the “survivors” without provoking a major backlash. The consultancy is essentially applying corporate lawfare theory against a group of teenage fans.

Trollslayer’s meme-tracking algorithm believes it can safely remove six “tastemakers” from the game within a two week period without arousing suspicion of an organised purge. They aren’t particularly picky about how this happens, but have certain rules of engagement:

At no point should Pseudopod Games be implicated in murdering, blackmailing or brainwashing their own fans (obviously). Trollslayer has a layer of deniability (“we receive funding from a number of feminist and anti-extremist policlubs, and were acting on their behalf”) but would again strongly prefer not to become embroiled in a horrible murder scandal.

The team will have access to the guts of the game, allowing them to place monsters, dance moves and “Hearthfires” across the city of Miami. However, Pseudopod games wants to avoid the perception that criminals are misusing the game. I.e: if the team use the game to lure six people into violent murders, they will not be fulfilling the mission goals!

The team should ideally avoid using the same method to remove or discredit more than two of the targets, again to avoid the perception of an organised purge.

Beyond this ROE, Solar isn’t fussy. The team can murder the gamers, discredit them, sour them on the game, rewrite their personalities, redirect their attentions toward CuteMonsterParty Online, etc. The mission is simply to identify the most effective nazi agitators and silence them.

THE GAME

RocknaRock is an augmented reality game about Viking Gods preparing for the Metal-Apocalypse by defeating monsters and acquiring dance moves. Players can battle monsters using virtual dance moves, or each other using real dance moves. Enthusiasm matters more than actual talent. Players meet at #Hearths to test their skills and mosh to the game’s large collection of licensed early-2020’s era bop-metal songs, usually played over headphones so as not to traumatise passing adults.